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Susan Wagner senior Darin Humes-James (5) attempts to make a pass against Canarsie’s full-court pressure while the Wolfpack’s Justin Rodriguez looks on during Tuesday’s PSAL 4A contest in Sea View.(Advance\/SILive.com | Charlie De Biase Jr.)<\/p>\nSTATEN ISLAND, N.Y. \u2014 Their faces said it all.<\/p>\n
Susan Wagner\u2019s players walked off their Sea View court with looks of disgust shortly after the final buzzer sounded as they came to grips that they let one get away.<\/p>\n
And as disappointing as it was to watch highly touted Canarsie walk away with a 70-69 PSAL 4A Brooklyn-Staten Island II division, come-from-behind victory over the host Falcons on Tuesday in Sea View, the Falcons did prove one thing: Do not sleep on them.<\/p>\n
Wagner, which received a career-high 22 points from sharp-shooting senior Adem Djonbalic, pushed the bigger Wolfpack around for a good portion of Tuesday\u2019s game. SW, which fell to 6-1 (2-1 PSAL), owned a 14-point lead early in the second half before one bad stretch helped Canarsie get back into the game and ultimately steal a victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was our 2025 goal to be undefeated at the (holiday) break and we were up 10 points at halftime against a team that has made some noise in the preseason and has a Division I player (Austin Peay commit P.J. Singleton) and a (Christian) Marbury transfer from Lincoln and we had 16 minutes remaining to win the game,\u2019’ said SW head coach Danny Lanigan, who watched his team\u2019s season-opening, six-game win streak come to an end. \u201dAnd unfortunately, in the first four minutes of the second half, we got very, very careless with the ball. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it was what they were doing,\u2019’ the coach said matter-of-factly. \u201dI think it was what we weren\u2019t doing.\u2019’<\/p>\n
In addition to Djonbalic, who finished with six three-pointers, the Falcons received contributions from their other starters, including Chris Albano (15 points), Clevi Hoxha (12 points, five rebounds), Charles Gambino (nine points, eight rebounds) and Darin Humes-James (nine points, five rebounds). <\/p>\n
Susan Wagner senior Darin Humes-James (5) attempts to make a pass against Canarsie’s full-court pressure while the Wolfpack’s Justin Rodriguez looks on during Tuesday’s PSAL 4A contest in Sea View.(Advance\/SILive.com | Charlie De Biase Jr.)<\/p>\n
The Wolfpack, which features the 6-foot-6 Singleton (22 points, six rebound) and 6-8 Devin Clarke (18 points, 15 rebounds), improved to 5-0 (3-0 PSAL).<\/p>\n
But it was the smaller Falcons who controlled the play for the first two quarters. SW forced seven turnovers, only committed four of their own and rode the red-hot shooting of Djonbalic and Hoxha (combined 22 points, four treys in the first half) to an impressive 38-28 lead at halftime.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe shot it really well,\u2019’ said Lanigan. \u201dWe were finding the open man. Adem was on fire for two games in a row, Clevi was shooting it well and they have a big kid (Clarke) who hurt us in spurts, but we made him uncomfortable in the first half and forced some turnovers.\u2019’<\/p>\n
Clarke opened the second half with an interior bucket, but Djonbalic responded by burying back-to-back treys in a 34-second span to up the Falcons\u2019 lead to a game-high 14 points (44-30) just 55 seconds into the second half.<\/p>\n
Then, unfortunately, havoc struck. Canarsie\u2019s 2-2-1 full-court pressure began to take its toll on the Falcons, who committed eight of their 14 turnovers in the third period.<\/p>\n
The result was a game-changing 19-0 run over a 4:27 span. Singleton led the way with seven points \u2014 all in transition \u2014 and Clarke and Marbury added four points apiece as the Wolfpack built a 49-44 advantage.<\/p>\n
Djonbalic finally broke the spell when he hit yet another trey with 2:15 on the clock, but Canarsie took a 55-52 lead into the final eight minutes.<\/p>\n
Although Wagner returned to doing a better job handling Canarsie\u2019s pressure, the Brooklyn school opened the fourth with a 10-4 spurt that was capped by Andrew Gundy\u2019s three-point play. The Chiefs owned a 65-56 lead with 5:48 remaining.<\/p>\n
But the Falcons responded with a run of their own behind point guard Albano. The senior scored the last eight points of a 13-5 run, including a right-wing trey off a pretty pass from Gambino that cut Canarsie\u2019s lead to a single point (70-69) with 2:03.<\/p>\n
Amazingly, that was the last time either team would score. The Falcons had multiple possessions, including two in the waning seconds. Albano\u2019s three-point attempt from the left wing was off the mark and although Clarke grabbed the carom, he stepped out of bounds with just 4.4 ticks left.<\/p>\n
Albano used a Gambino screen to get open at the foul line and although he couldn\u2019t handle Humes-James\u2019 pass cleanly because of the defensive presence of Rhoman Gittens, he eventually gained control. The three-year varsity player drove left and put up a short, fade-away jumper that was off the mark as the final buzzer sounded.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Albano) didn\u2019t have his greatest 32 minutes, but there was a big stretch in the fourth quarter where he was instrumental in giving us a chance to win it at the end,\u2019’ said Lanigan. \u201dHe\u2019s a confident senior and scorer and he didn\u2019t have a great game (from his standards), but when given the opportunity to turn it around, he took it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just wish we could have made one more shot at the end.\u2019’<\/p>\n
NOTES: Canarsie did a solid job from the free-throw line as it connected on 13 of 16 attempts, including a pivotal 11 for 11 in the second half (8 for 8 in the final period). Singleton (5 for 5) and Clarke (4 for 4) led the way. SW was 6 for 9 in the game (Albano 3 for 3) and only took one attempt after halftime … Both teams finished with 14 turnovers … Wagner had an 11-1 advantage in three-point makes. In addition to Djonbalic, Albano and Hoxha had two apiece … Canarsie owned a 41-27 edge in rebounds … SW freshman Brayden Louisson took the lone charge of the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. \u2014 Their faces said it all. Susan Wagner\u2019s players walked off their Sea View court…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-66766","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-staten-island","12":"tag-staten-island-headlines","13":"tag-staten-island-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}